The Garden Route to Cape Town

The Garden Route to Cape Town

The Garden Route is a famous route in South Africa and it didn’t disappoint. For us, the coast and inland areas just got better and better as we approached Cape Town. We were lucky to be able to stay at some of the more popular campsites (Storms River and Nature’s Valley) before the busy Christmas period started. From mid December we mostly wild camped in and around Cape Town (the campsites are always fully booked over the Xmas holidays).

We wild camped right in the centre of Plettenburg Bay, from where we explored the wonderful hiking on the Robberg peninsula, watched the England v South Africa rugby and Dave went deep sea fishing (we had fish for tea that night)!

After visiting Knysner and ‘the Heads’, we headed inland, and drove up through the pine forests towards de Vlugt and then the picturesque towns of deRust and Prince Albert. This route included the magnificent Meiringspoort Gorge, Swartberg Pass (considered one of the finest in South Africa) and the Cango Caves (meh – you ‘can go’ if you want to!).

We stayed at Oudtshoorn (ostrich capital of the world) for a couple of days, a town we both liked, and met a Swiss couple, Jürgen and Margot, driving a similar truck to BB. There were some South African auto racers staying at the same campsite, and we spent the following day at their dirt track race meeting (fun, but dusty).

Returning to the coast at George, we stayed at another classic campsite ‘Ebb and Flow’ from where we hiked along the Touws River. George has a very interesting railway and transport museum, from where we travelled on an inspection truck (the Power Van) up into mountains on the old railway, stopping for a picnic at the top,

Continuing along the coast we visited Mossel Bay and the Bartolomeu Dias museum. Dias was the first European to navigate around the Southern tip of Africa, demonstrating that a sea route to Asia could be established. In 1988, a replica of his caravel made the same journey from Portugal to South Africa (crewed by both nationalities) to celebrate the quincentenary (500 years) of the original voyage. We then progressed to Still Bay where we met up with Sean, an old friend from the UAE.

After an entertaining crossing of the Breede River at Malagas by pontoon ferry, we arrived at Point Cape Agulhas – the most southerly point in Africa and took the obligatory photos.

Next on the agenda was the wine regions. Francine, earlier in our trip, had found a particular sparkling wine she enjoyed and so we decided to visit the winery (“vinyards” seemingly being a European thing!) – it turned out to be in a super location, had a fantastic restaurant and the management let us stay in its carpark overnight. What a result! Given it was cherry season, we thought it rude not to go picking and we headed to the Klondyke Cherry Farm, just beyond Ceres, and picked 4kg, although I do think we were two 2kg heavier too!!

From Ceres we crossed over the Bain’s Kloof pass, just managing to pass under a very low rock overhang, to Franschoek. The next day we boarded the ‘Wine Tram’ and had a very relaxed time, being shepherded from winery to winery.

Then it was back to the coast to visit Hermanus and Onrus before ending up in Cape Town for the run up to Christmas. Here we visited The Cape of Good Hope, Scarborough, Hout Bay, Melkbosstrand, climbed Table Mountain and met our UAE friends Thom and Christa, before heading out to a campsite at Paarl for Christmas and New Year. After New Year, we had a lovely day with Alan and Lila from Hong Kong days. We then put Big Bertha into storage and flew to the Caribbean to scatter Francine’s dad’s ashes as was his wish.